Admissions

Technical Areas

Focus

Vernon R. Rice serves as Of Counsel in the firm. He practices in the area of domestic and international patent prosecution. He has broad experience in industrial chemistry, polymer chemistry, life science and biochemistry technologies.

Mr. Rice joined Workman-Nydegger in 2004 after retiring from a distinguished career at the DuPont Company. There he served as Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, overseeing all DuPont intellectual property legal work, including that of domestic and international subsidiaries. While at DuPont, his experience included prosecution of chemical patent applications in the United States and major countries of the world, managing an international patent and trade secret licensing program and overseeing a 75 lawyer intellectual property law group that handled all of DuPont’s intellectual property legal work including patent procurement and litigation, as well as aspects of DuPont’s biotechnology portfolio.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Rice supervised the commercial attorneys of the DuPont textile fibers businesses. In that capacity he handled commercial legal work and antitrust matters. At that time, he also managed a legal group responsible for corporate mergers and acquisitions. While serving as Chief Counsel-Intellectual Property, Mr. Rice was also Chief Counsel of the Asia/Pacific region and of DuPont’s Agricultural and Nutrition business, where he oversaw legal aspects of DuPont’s biotechnology businesses.

Upon returning to Salt Lake City, Mr. Rice became an adjunct professor of law at Brigham Young University where he taught courses on patent law, intellectual property/antitrust law and biotechnology law from 2003 to 2013.

Experience

While at Workman Nydegger, Mr. Rice has concentrated on his law school teaching responsibilities while also handling prosecution of major patent applications covering Brigham Young University technology in the area of industrial catalysts. He also has been active in preparing and prosecuting medical device patent applications.

He has served for many years as a Founder in the entrepreneurial programs of business schools at Brigham Young University and Utah State University.

Achievements

Community Involvement

For many years Mr. Rice was active in innovative education programs related to math and science. He served as chair of an industry group in Delaware to establish the first math-science charter school in Delaware, The Charter School of Wilmington, which still operates in Wilmington, Delaware.